After visiting the city's cyber crime cell regularly for the last 12 days to check on the progress officials had made in his ATM card fraud case, when finally confronted with the truth, Shahrukh, 26, chose to forgive the offender. Why? "Because I wanted to save my friend," he
said.

Shahrukh is a bachelor of physiotherapy (BPTh) student at Integral University. On November 10, he approached the cyber crime cell with the complaint that someone had fraudulently used his Punjab National Bank debit card details and duped him of Rs. 8,000.

He even approached senior home department official for speeding up the police probe.

Circle officer Hazratganj Dinesh Yadav, who is also the nodal officer of the cyber crime cell, said, "When the matter was probed with the bank, the complainant was told someone has purchased goods worth nearly Rs. 10,000 from flipkart. com, the online shopping store, using his debit card details."

"Further i nvestigation revealed that the culprit is someone familiar to the complainant, as he had used the Internet connection of the same university where the complaint studies for online purchases. And finally we zeroed in on the complainant's friend," he added.

Both are doing their internship after completing their four-year course.

Yadav said the culprit friend is also a student of the same course as Shahrukh and had been his close friend for last four years. "He noted down the debit card details and made heavy online purchases from Shahrukh's account."

The CO said initially, Shahrukh was not ready to believe his friend had duped him and was not allowing the cyber crime cell to interrogate him. But the cops interro

gated his friend after convincing him. The offender confessed his crime during the interrogation.

He revealed he had noted down the debit card details on November 3 and used them for online shopping a week later. Yadav said Shahrukh was shocked when he learned of the sequence of incidents but decided to withdraw the complaint considering his four years' friendship.

The CO said, "Shahrukh told us that the accused is from a very humble ground and he does not want to spoil his friend's career for just Rs. 8,000. He said the accused too was repentant and had apologised to his friend.